Emotional Regulation: Skills, Symptoms & Treatment
If you’ve heard that you’re “always overreacting” or that you’re “too sensitive,” you’ll know firsthand how frustrating that kind of feedback is. Especially when, to you, the reaction felt justified in the moment.
It’s usually only afterwards, once the dust has settled, that the regret kicks in and you start questioning whether the response was really proportionate to what happened.
If the cycle of reacting, regretting, then wondering if there’s something wrong with you sounds familiar, it might be due to how you regulate your emotions.
This page covers:
- What emotional regulation and dysregulation are.
- The conditions linked to regulation difficulties.
- How to get help to start taking control of your emotions.
What Is Emotional Regulation?
Emotional regulation is the ability to recognize the emotions you have, when you have them, how you experience them, and how you express them.[1] It’s what allows you to feel something strongly, whether good or bad, without that feeling taking over your behavior.
Contrary to what you might first think, emotional regulation doesn’t mean suppressing your emotions or training yourself to stop feeling them. In fact, research shows that habitually suppressing emotional expression is linked to more negative emotions and poorer relationships.[1] Instead, it’s about healthy self-regulation that stays flexible.
Suppression can mean forcing a smile through frustration until it passes. Regulation means:
- Noticing the frustration.
- Pausing before reacting.
- Understanding what triggered it.
- Choosing how to respond.
If you’re reading this and you’re not sure whether you have emotional control on any given day, don’t worry. Emotional regulation is one of the most important mental health skills you can develop, and it can be strengthened at any point in life.
Is There Such a Thing as Positive Emotional Regulation?
When people talk about emotional regulation, they often assume it means controlling strong negative emotions.
In fact, emotional regulation isn’t just about controlling negative emotions. It’s also key to maintaining and enjoying positive ones. Research calls this positive emotional regulation and notes that it’s accompanied by physical changes that support the body and mind.[2]
Research has also found that down-regulating positive emotions is just as important for certain people.[3] This can be most useful in moments that call for a level head, like staying composed enough to think clearly right after hearing good news.
We can probably all think of someone who has trouble controlling their positive emotions. Maybe it’s someone who gets a little too wild at company gatherings or who can’t control their loud laughter.
So while most of the focus is on down-regulating negative emotions, healthy emotional regulation is really about balance.
What Does Healthy Emotional Regulation Look Like?
Research breaks emotional regulation down into a few key components. Together, they make up the ability to manage emotions effectively.[4]
1. Recognizing What You’re Actually Feeling
Emotional awareness comes first because you can’t regulate an emotion you haven’t identified. If you’re able to name what you’re feeling, it gives you the information you need to respond in the appropriate way. The more specific you can be when naming the feeling, the better the outcome.
Neuroimaging research has found that the simple act of putting a feeling into words reduces activity in the amygdala, which is the brain’s “alarm system.”[5] This suggests that naming what you feel may help calm the emotional response itself.
2. Tolerating Discomfort Without Reacting Immediately
Not every difficult emotion needs an immediate answer. If you’re able to practice distress tolerance—the ability to sit with an uncomfortable feeling without automatically reacting to it—you begin to take back control.
This doesn’t mean that you have to endure unpleasant feelings indefinitely, but it does mean you learn how to pause before reacting. One simple way to build this skill is to pause and silently count to ten before responding. That’s often enough time for the initial spike to ease.
3. Choosing How To Respond
Once you’ve identified your emotions and paused to work out the best response, the next step is putting that appropriate response into action.
Cognitive reappraisal means reinterpreting a situation to change its emotional impact. Research links it to better emotional outcomes than avoidance.[6]
This suggests that slowing down, assessing the situation, and then acting on it beats clamming up and waiting for it to pass.
What Is Emotional Dysregulation?
Emotional dysregulation is what happens when the skills above aren’t available or aren’t working.
Emotional dysregulation looks like emotional responses that are consistently too intense for the situation, or that last longer than they should.
But emotional dysregulation is not a formal diagnosis. Clinicians look at it more as a transdiagnostic factor. This means it cuts across many different conditions rather than belonging to a single one.[7]
Everyone has days where their emotions feel harder to manage, and a few bad moments don’t mean you’re dealing with emotional dysregulation. It becomes a clinical concern when the reactions are frequent and intense enough to interfere with your ability to function.
Signs of Emotional Dysregulation
Emotional dysregulation is a complex topic, so it helps to understand what it looks like in practice. For example, reading that one of the signs of emotional dysregulation is a “reaction that feels disproportionate to the situation” can raise more questions than it answers.
Below, we go through each sign with examples of what this might look like in action.[8]
Reactions That Feel Disproportionate
This might be a small trigger that produces a large emotional response. For example:
- A minor criticism at work might feel devastating.
- A change of plans might provoke anger.
The feeling might not be wrong here, but the scale of it doesn’t match what happened.
Difficulty Calming Down Once Upset
If you find yourself unable to calm down for hours after a brief disagreement, or find that your mood for the rest of the day is determined by something that happened in the morning, it’s a sign you are having difficulty regulating emotions.
Avoidance of Situations That Might Trigger Emotions
If you’ve started to notice that your emotions are difficult to control, you might start to avoid situations where those reactions could be triggered.
For example, you might:
- Withdraw from relationships.
- Turn down social invitations.
- Avoid difficult conversations entirely.
This avoidance may provide short-term relief but doesn’t address the emotional dysregulation itself.
Mission Connection is here to help you or your loved one take the next steps towards an improved mental well-being.
Mental Health Conditions Linked To Emotional Dysregulation
Earlier, we mentioned that instead of being a standalone diagnosis, emotional dysregulation is considered more of a transdiagnostic symptom. If you’ve noticed it in yourself, it’s important to understand which mental health condition may be behind it.
Only looking at the symptoms means that the real issue underneath remains, and in many cases gets worse. Some conditions commonly associated with emotional dysregulation include the following.
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
Emotional dysregulation is considered to be one of the core features of borderline personality disorder (BPD). The biosocial model behind dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) suggests it comes from a combination of biological emotional sensitivity and an environment that didn’t support learning to manage that sensitivity.
Trauma
If a person is dealing with trauma, it affects their nervous system’s ability to return to a calm baseline after a perceived threat has passed.
People with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), for example, may find their emotional reactions get almost “stuck” at high intensity. Daily, this can mean you react to minor inconveniences the same way you would to a genuine threat.
This is because your nervous system isn’t differentiating between them. Trauma can have deep-seated roots, and you may not even remember or fully know what is causing these symptoms until you begin to explore your memories and experiences in therapy.
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
Emotional dysregulation in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is now recognized as far more common than it was previously understood. Estimates suggest it affects around 32-85% of adults with ADHD.[9]
It might present as quick emotional reactions and difficulty letting go of frustration. You might also lean on strategies like rumination instead of healthier coping mechanisms.
Depression
Research shows that emotional dysregulation is a hallmark symptom of depression.[10] Depression brings reduced:
- Energy.
- Motivation.
- Cognitive capacity.
This combination makes it harder to follow regulation strategies.
Withdrawal and avoidance might become default responses, because the person doesn’t have the resources to engage with their emotions constructively.
Anxiety
Worry is itself a dysregulated response to uncertainty. When you’re anxious, it can narrow the range of strategies that feel available. This can make rumination and avoidance feel like the best, or only, option.
The person may certainly recognize that the worry is disproportionate but lacks the skills needed to regulate their emotions.
Can Emotional Regulation Skills Be Learned?
Emotional regulation skills can certainly be learned, and the research backs it up. One review that measured changes to emotional regulation after psychological treatment found that dysregulation decreased in the vast majority of cases.[7]
The coping skills learned within treatment include the following.
Identifying and Naming Emotions
As the neuroimaging research mentioned earlier, labeling what you feel reduces the brain’s alarm response. This suggests it’s beneficial to build the vocabulary and habit of naming emotions as they arise.
For example, you could state aloud, “I’m feeling anxious and restless.” This gives you a lot more to work with rather than “I feel bad.”
Cognitive Reappraisal
This means changing the way you interpret a situation to change its emotional impact. It focuses on asking whether there’s another way to understand what happened that’s equally valid but less emotionally charged.
The research consistently links reappraisal to better emotional and social outcomes, which is why it’s a technique learned within both cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).
Building Distress Tolerance
DBT-based distress tolerance techniques provide the practical tools needed to get through intense emotional moments. These include self-soothing strategies and physiologically based techniques that help bring the body’s stress response back down to baseline.
Grounding and Nervous System Regulation
Techniques like controlled breathing and body-based exercises that interrupt the stress response are widely taught in clinical settings.
These techniques are most effective when they’re used as part of the therapeutic approach, rather than as standalone fixes.
When Does Emotional Dysregulation Require Professional Support?
Sensible advice is that if the dysregulation is linked to an underlying condition, like depression or trauma, it warrants professional help. It should also be considered if emotional reactions are affecting relationships or day-to-day life for a long period of time.
Professional support may be the right decision if you have tried on your own to improve emotional regulation but haven’t been able to.
You should also seek professional support if you believe emotional dysregulation is linked to an underlying condition that hasn’t been diagnosed yet. In a lot of cases, mental health and neurodiverse conditions like ADHD can go decades before ever being diagnosed.
In What Setting Can Professional Emotional Regulation Support Be Received?
In most cases, outpatient therapy can be the right setting for someone looking to improve their emotional dysregulation, while also addressing the condition underneath it.
Outpatient therapy is flexible enough that you’re able to attend a fixed number of sessions per week and still have time for work and other life responsibilities.
The combination of skills-based therapy and, where appropriate, medication to address the underlying condition is what builds lasting emotional resilience.
Get Emotional Regulation Support With Mission Connection
If emotional dysregulation has been affecting your daily life and the condition behind it needs professional attention, Mission Connection can help you get the treatment and support you need.
We provide outpatient mental health treatment for adults dealing with conditions where emotional dysregulation is a core feature. We offer several options for effective outpatient treatment, including in-person programs at our locations in California, Virginia, and Washington, virtual telehealth, and a hybrid program that combines in-person and virtual care.
Treatment is built around helping you develop the regulation skills covered on this page, alongside addressing the condition that’s driving the dysregulation. Our outpatient programs consist of evidence-based therapies and are designed so you can build these skills while continuing to manage your work and daily responsibilities.
Mission Connection is Joint Commission-accredited. We also accept most major insurance providers, so that your recovery is not hindered due to financial issues.
If you’ve recognized yourself in anything on this page, contact Mission Connection today. A member of our team will walk you through what the right next step looks like for your situation.
